Jobless Tennesseans will get 14 - not 20 - more weeks of benefits

Additional unemployment benefits that Congress approved for the jobless earlier this month won't be as sweet as most people expected due to fine print in the law.

The upshot is that instead of 20 weeks of extra benefits at a maximum of $300 a week, many Tennesseans probably will draw only 14 more weeks — on top of 79 weeks previously received — before the aid runs out due to a Dec. 31 cutoff date.The mix-up is confusing and confounding to many jobless workers who have exhausted or are about to run out of their government aid. Approximately 35,500 Tennesseans getting unemployment checks could be affected.

Fourteen weeks is better than nothing," said Johnny Hayes, 57, a Nashvillian who has been out of work for a little more than a year and got his last unemployment check a few weeks ago.